Thursday, 27 November 2014

Me and cars

I don't have a car. I live in the south-east of London, which is the least well-served part of the city in terms of public transport links, but what we have is still pretty good. I was never really into driving in the first place, so living in a place where buses, Tubes and trains can get you pretty much anywhere (and frequently faster than you'll get there by car) made it easy for me to decide to ditch the motor I had. The last time I drove, I was behind the wheel of a car that had been specially adapted for a friend who'd had a leg amputated. It was spanking new and she had to drive it home from the showroom. Although she only had a learner licence and I had a full licence, I hadn't driven for several years so I told her that, no, really, it would be better for her to drive. Anyway, she managed to get us lost in ten minutes, became stressed out and insisted that I take a turn. Nervous, I got in the driver's seat and tried to work out where we were in relation to her flat. As it turned out, the route back involved going down residential streets with a road-narrowing traffic calming system. My anxiety was not helped by my friend doing some very high-pitched back-seat driving that ascended an octave whenever we came within three feet of, well, anything. Suffice to say I gave the hubcaps a jolly good scraping while steering through the narrow parts of the road. At this point, her voice passed almost beyond the range of human hearing - she shrieked at me to stop the car and let her drive. I was only too happy to comply with this instruction.